Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Rudd Center has created an online course to help medical professionals reduce weight-bias stigma.They recently came out with a series of YouTube videos about the same subject.For this, I applaud them. Check them out below. One is weight bias at home and school. The other is weight bias at the doctors. I'm sure plenty of y'all have experienced weight bias at one time or another. It's just another form of discrimination in my book.

From the Rudd Center website:

To increase public awareness about weight bias, the Rudd Center has released two new videos demonstrating the nature and extent of weight bias at home, in school and even at the doctor's office. The videos are hosted by former supermodel and activist Emme and feature Rudd Center experts including Rebecca Puhl, PhD, Director of Research & Weight Stigma Initiatives. Each video uses both expert commentary and dramatic representation to address the obstacles obese individuals face with weight bias in American society. The videos also present strategies to help combat this rapidly growing problem.

1 comments:

I got the "you need to lose weight" talk yesterday from my doctor, and was told it's "calories in/calories out". This despite the fact it's in my records that I've dieted numerous times in the past, taken phen-fen, and had a failed VBG. I actually yelled at her and told her my weight is no longer a topic for discussion. That the only thing 35 years of dieting and weight loss lectures have done for me is to make me fatter. That there is no diet that works for permanent weight loss because our bodies are not closed thermodynamic systems, and go into famine mode (slowed metabolism) when on a restricted calorie regimen. FFS, she's a doctor, she should know this, but she's so brainwashed by the OMGOBESITYEPIPANIC that she can't see facts, all she can see is the propaganda. What started her tirade about my weight? I saw her for the first time in 2007, and I weighed 395 lbs, blood pressure was 134/82 (borderline hypertensive since they lowered the standard from 160/90), then when I saw her in Feb 2008, I was down to 375, with the same blood pressure. Now I'm back up to 390, and my blood pressure yesterday was 166/90. And according to her, it was high because I gained 15 lbs. Now, I don't know how the hell I lost that 18 lbs between 2007 and 2008, and I don't know how I gained 15 lbs between 2008 and 2009. Nothing has changed in how/what/when I eat (I eat the same meals as my husband, who has type 2 diabetes, and my portions are smaller than his). I do know that my weight can fluctuate as much as 10 lbs from one day to the next, I saw that when I was dieting. I finally ended up telling her that if my fat killed me (like I really think that's gonna happen), at least I wouldn't have to listen to people spewing crap at me about how I need to lose weight or it's going to kill me. I told her I was stressed about finances, but she says stress has nothing to do with high blood pressure (and I was stressed because I also knew she was gonna go off on me about the weight gain, but again, that had nothing to do with my blood pressure being high).I think I'm going to take Rachel's suggestion, and burn those Rudd videos to a DVD, and give it to her, along with a couple of articles I printed out from Junkfood Science on blood pressure and strokes/heart attacks and mortality and their relation to BMI (thinner people die more often from those than fat ones, and fat ones don't have any of them any more often than thin people do, who'd a thunk it?).